Fiddler's Green
by Woodspurge
Summary: Just a collection of scenes that wander into my mind, mostly while listening to Irish pub songs. Aren't pub songs awesome? Rating is only for language, at least so far.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I did not create, do not own, and realize no financial gain from the universe of _The Hunger Games_.

Note: Here I've simply tried to capture the spirit of a song that always alters my mood when I listen to it. Also borrowed inspiration from a horror movie from several years ago that I think was entitled ' _Shutter_ '.

 **Will Ye Go Lassie, Go**

In the wilderness outside District 12, Haymitch walks along the edge of a crystal-clear brook. An observer would say that he walks alone.

He is never really alone these days. The ghosts crowd around, restless as him. They moan with the wind and brush against his face and hands and ruffle his hair, which is growing long again. Sometimes, mostly at night, they speak much more distinctly. They harry him, reminding him how scared they are, and how young, and how hurt. They beg him for help or at least comfort. He wishes they'd go away, but he understands why they never will. They don't want to be forgotten, that's all.

The kids had wanted to come with him today. They don't like him to go off on his own like this, though the girl's at least smart enough not to say so. Haymitch knows that the boy expects him to just disappear one day, really any day now. Just keep walking, maybe, further and further away from the place where he'd endured so much of life, until exhaustion and hunger draw him down to the earth's cold bed. That, or make use of the knife he still always carries in one of the pockets of his old jacket. And sometimes he thinks about those options for hours on end as he walks. It's good to have options. So good to have some degree of control.

For now he's only gathering wildflowers: chicory and Queen Anne's Lace and wild mountain thyme and heather. He doesn't know what her favorite flower was and assumes it was some fragile hot house thing that would never grow here. But he thinks she would have liked Queen Anne's Lace if she had known it. He'd woken up to her this morning. She'd been beside him in bed and sitting across from him at the old scarred dining table and heavy on his shoulders wherever he walked. So he's building her a bower.

He returns to the structure, supple branches cut and weaved into a frame about three feet high and three feet wide, by now almost completely hidden by the layers of blue and white and purple. Circling it, he finds a thin place and weaves in the stems of the flowers one by one.

"Fine girl you are," he tells her, without raising his eyes from the fleeting monument. His voice is a little rough and a little muffled, but it doesn't break. She doesn't answer in words, but the weight on his shoulders shifts and then a warm breeze stirs the hair over one of his ears and touches him nowhere else.

"Haymitch?" a soft voice asks; not her, though.

"Go back home, Penryn," he says without turning around. The weight gets heavier, pushing him into the ground so that he has to lock his knees. It hurts now, a deep ache that slowly pervades his chest. And the worst part of that is how death has changed and twisted her.

"Come with me," Penryn implores. She doesn't touch him, not while his back is turned, but he can feel her stepping close. The solid living energy of her radiates out at him. And where it touches his neck it burns like fire.

" _You're mine. Mine_ ," whispers a voice in his ear, hurt and scared and too young to die.

"Yeah," he agrees. He turns to Penryn, who smiles up at him with relief and something else that might in a better world be love. All together the three of them walk back towards the Village. An observer would say there were only two.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

Note: The rating was changed for language.

 **2\. Mountain Dew**

"What is this?" Peeta asks, looking around the shed at the tubes and glass bottles arranged on a motley assortment of tables and stools. Katniss sniffs pointedly at the air and rolls her eyes.

"Just keep it up, girl, and you won't get any," Haymitch tells her. He circles around the sprawling contraption, tilting his head as he compares it to his memory of what it's supposed to look like. Not that he put it together from memory alone or anything. He'd also inked tiny numbers on it wherever two pieces connected. And that had been pretty much all he could do. Ripper's daughter doesn't know the first thing about how the still works, and Haymitch's hands still shake too much to make a decent drawing.

"Ripper's still," Katniss says for Peeta's benefit.

"I thought you'd cut back on the drinking." There's an accusing undertone to that. Haymitch casts him a hostile look before getting ahold of himself and shrugging. It still rankles sometimes, hearing Peeta's voice. He knows the kid wasn't in his right mind, but he's never going to convince his nerves of that.

"Have," he says shortly. "I'm sober. Thanks for noticing."

"Oh, we noticed," Katniss says, matching his tone. "Hard to miss that variety of bitchiness." She looks at Peeta. "Let him have his still." The implication, sitting there on the surface for all of them to profess belief in, being that she'd rather he returns to being constantly drunk than have to put up with him. Katniss has been watching his hands since she stepped in here. He gestures with them constantly as he speaks, and when he's quiet they fidget. He can't keep still. Most telling of all, he's sweating. The temperature outside is in the forties, and it's barely any warmer in the shed.

"He's not being bitchy," Peeta says evenly, concealing his frustration. This doesn't need to devolve into yet another spat between the two of them. This is important. If that thing's set up right, Haymitch will have no trouble procuring the wheat and rye to get it running. And what will become of him once he can not only make as much liquor as he wants, but also do it without ever having to go out among other people? And he'll be in control of how strong his drink is, too. There's no way this won't end in tears.

"Damn right I'm not. But you, now, sweetheart: you've just bitched your way right out of a bowl of the 'rare old mountain dew'." He says the words with a strange lilt, as though they reference some private joke or just a mellow memory.

"Like you could stop me," Katniss says with an unimpressed look.

"Haymitch, no," Peeta says. "Get rid of it. The train brings you three bottles every time it comes. We can make it four, okay? If you start making your own, you won't last six months."

"Train only comes every fortnight. If you break this still I will kill you. Don't worry so much, Peeta. Synthetic liver, remember?" Haymitch flashes his teeth and drums scarred fingers over his abdomen. Parts of his intestines and his stomach are synths, too, but the liver's the only thing they completely replaced.

"Yeah, what could go wrong?" Peeta says sarcastically.

"Right?" Haymitch returns.

"Your heart isn't synthetic. Neither is your brain. And speaking of that, you just casually threatened to kill me if I come between you and your drink. You need-"

" _Don't_ fucking say it," Haymitch interrupts, his voice suddenly cold. He deliberately steps between the still and Peeta.

"Come on, let's go," Katniss urges. The conversation is so obviously over; _she's_ not the one who picks fights with him, at least not anymore. She just speaks his language.

Peeta stares back at Haymitch, determined not to look away first. The old brute looks ready to lunge at him, just like the mean-tempered dog he is. "Haymitch," Peeta says to himself. He recognizes the tell-tale shimmer of that last thought, and he tries to do what the therapist had suggested: picture Haymitch as he was on the day they met. Haymitch had been his responsibility once, just as surely as the man had been their guardian. As twisted as everything the Capitol touched; shouldn't it be one or the other? Neither of them are entirely sane anymore. Katniss is now the one they both must check reality against. Gods, how did that happen?

"Come _on_ ," Katniss says. "He's not going to listen to a word you say right now. He's shaking and nauseous and his head aches and he wants a drink more than anything else in the world. You're out, aren't you?" This last to Haymitch.

"Yeah," he admits, hating her a little for seeing all that.

"The train only came nine days ago!" Peeta exclaims. Haymitch shrugs and turns back to the still. "Okay. Come back with us. We have a little put by."

"How much?" Haymitch asks too quickly.

"Little over half a bottle. You can have some while we talk about this."

"Okay," Haymitch agrees. He's still going to start up the still. He'd rationed as well as he could, but the train just doesn't bring enough to get through two weeks. To get them to bring more he'd have to appeal to that goddamn sanctimonious prick of a doctor. It's nobody's goddamn business but his own.

He follows Katniss and Peeta out of the shed, locking the door behind himself.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer is attached to the first chapter.

 **III. Wasn't That a Party**

It seems the only respectful thing to do is to get totally wasted.

The small group of celebrants walk meandering circles through the lower story of the house, going from kitchen to dining room to den, stopping by the bathroom as needed, and ending up back in the kitchen to refill their glasses. Most of them drink only moderately, and none of them are used to drinking this much. But each one feels that they, personally, deserve to poison themselves. And a couple of the partygoers would not mind if they drank themselves to death tonight in this haunted house.

The entire store of liquor bottles is set out on the kitchen counters, along with orange juice and carbonated water displayed grudgingly for those who can't drink the hard stuff straight. In addition to what had been left, each of them bring a final offering.

Finnick sets down a large bottle of cinnamon flavored whiskey and smiles around at the others in the kitchen, meeting their eyes. For just a moment Katniss manages to summon the old fire to flash out at him from her eyes; then she shrugs and looks away. She just doesn't have the energy, and what does it matter? Peeta speaks in a tired, flat voice: "Thanks for coming." He doesn't look up from the counter. It's unclear whether he even recognizes Finnick, or cares who he is.

Johanna smiles at Finnick, winks, and downs the rest of the drink she'd been holding so she can pour a generous tot of the cinnamon whiskey into her glass. "He'd have liked this," she says, taking an approving sip.

"He hated cinnamon," Peeta says, surprising everyone in the room. "You people are all horrible."

Katniss puts a commiserating hand on his arm and then measures out a half-and-half of white liquor and orange juice and presses it into his hand. "Drink this," she insists, not unkindly.

Peeta doffs the drink without hesitation because if there's one person left he should trust it's surely Katniss. Except sometimes he wants to kill her. And then it's clear to him that there's nothing good in this world and only his cowardice to keep him here.

Johanna produces a gallon jug of rum from a canvas bag she tosses carelessly into the corner. "It's what Chaff liked," she reminds them, and they nod.

Katniss and Peeta had both brought more white liquor. It's the harshest poison they know.

There's silence as each of them fills a glass. Peeta fills two, adding a splash of carbonated water to the liquor and orange juice in one of them. Still unspeaking, the four of them drift into the dining room. They stop around the table. One chair is half pulled out; a full glass sets next to a mostly full bottle. Katniss picks up the glass, takes a swallow, and hands it to Peeta. Peeta takes a deep breath and forces down a gulp of the liquid, shutting his eyes. It's their third pass through the dining room. Finnick ad Johanna look on, and when Peeta offers the glass they each take a sip from it. Finnick sets it back on the table and Katniss refills it from the bottle. They all look at the still-life represented here: the scarred table, the pulled-out chair, the glass and the bottle.

"He was brave," Johanna offers, all the irony and levity bled out of her voice.

No one else says anything, and after a moment they wander on into the den. There Peeta approaches the two armchairs facing the fire and hands the second glass to the etiolated woman watching the flames.

Effie is wearing a plain dark blue head scarf and a half-hearted nod toward her elaborate make-up of old. The powder she has applied just increases the impression of a pale and silent ghost. She's quite drunk. She takes the glass Peeta offers her with a breathy sigh that might have started out to be a word of thanks. She sips from it and then dips a finger into it and uses the moisture to trace out invisible words on the arm of the chair. Her other hand roams over her newly flat belly. "I shouldn't…" she sighs to no one.

"It's okay, Effie. Drink up," Katniss says for the third time. Effie obeys, still looking into the flames.

The four others keeps circling, keep observing the ritual of the table, keep drinking and bringing Effie drinks. It's miserable and it gets worse with each repetition, each time they cough and swallow back their gorge. In spite of this they all start to laugh as they stumble through the house. Johanna grabs the bust of some unknown ancient god from the shelf in the entryway and carries it along with them, jeering at it and threatening to dash it against the wall if it won't drink. They all find it hilarious, though Johanna seems to be really angry even as she laughs. Effie passes out, but Peeta keeps bringing her drinks and lining them up on the table next to her.

Round about her seventh drink, Haymitch speaks up as Katniss is following the others out of the dining room. "Sit down, sweetheart, before you fall flat on your face."

Unsurprised, Katniss turns back as the others continue on and leave them alone. "You're one to talk," she snorts. He isn't even sitting at the table, though he waves a hand at the chair across from the one they've pulled out for him. Haymitch is under the table, lying on his side and propped up on one elbow, grinning sardonically up at her.

"I moved down here after Finnick spilled half my drink on the chair last time through." He shrugs. "Seems safer. Do you realize, if I get pneumonia now I'll probably have it forever?"

"Finnick's drunk," Katniss says fuzzily, dropping to her knees and crawling under the table to lie facing him.

"You're all drunk. And you're the sorriest bunch of lightweights I've ever seen, by the way. And, wasn't I supposed to be trying to stay on the wagon? You people are making that a little difficult."

Katniss gives him a blank look. "You're dead, Haymitch. Drink as much as you want."

"Yeah." Haymitch exhales in what's almost a sigh and rolls onto his back, looking up at the underside of the table. "Katniss, listen, the Games-"

"Shut up. They deserve it."

"I only backed you because I thought I sensed you were going to do something." He turns his head to look at her. "You were, weren't you? I always used to be able to tell with you."

Katniss doesn't answer immediately. She reaches up to the table, searching around until she encounters Haymitch's glass. Retrieving it, she takes several long swallows before pushing it across the floor towards him.

"No, you just keep right on drinking it for me," he says bitterly.

"I was going to do something," she admits. "I just… there were always too many people to protect."

"Yeah," Haymitch agrees. "S'okay. You did what you had to do."

"I'll be along soon," Katniss tells him. She suddenly feels way too sober.

Haymitch nods up at the table. "Shoot straight, Katniss. And… bring Peeta with you."

When she looks over he's gone. Katniss finishes his drink and goes to get her gun.


End file.
